Pre-paid mobile phone service extended in J&K, North East

The government today extended the pre-paid mobile services in Jammu and Kashmir and Northeast by another two years as the current permission was coming to an end on March 31, 2013.
According to a Department of Telecom notification, the pre-paid services in Jammu and Kashmir and Northeast has been extended upto March 31, 2015.
The extension of services by DoT was done after seeking an approval of the Committee of Secretaries as the services were coming to an end on March 31, 2013.
The decision to extend it by two more years was taken after the security situation in these states was reviewed and no major fault of misuse of mobile telephony came to notice.

The department had issued an order to stop pre-paid mobile services in these three service areas in 2009 due to security reasons.
In January, 2010, the government had lifted a ban on the use of pre-paid mobile connections in the North-East and Jammu & Kashmir for one year and had notified strict criteria for re-verification of subscribers, along with other conditions.
While there were no official figures available for the number of pre-paid mobile subscribers, unofficial estimates put the number of pre-paid subscribers in Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir to 15 lakh.